Had Mark Messier been so inclined, there’s every reason to believe that he – and not Bryan Trottier – would have been the rookie head coach behind the Rangers’ bench this season.
“Glen [Sather] has been asking me for a long time what I had in mind for when I stop playing, and he asked me last year about coaching,” The Captain said following yesterday’s morning skate. “I told him that’s not what I wanted to do; that I’m still a player.
“I have a lot of respect for the coaching fraternity, I know what coaches go through and how they prepare to be successful. I’m under no illusion that my career as a player would automatically translate into making me a successful coach.
“I’d never say never, but as of now I’m not interested. I’m a player. Coaching is not what I want to do right now.”
Messier, who sat out Sather’s Ranger coaching debut with a pinched nerve, knows the GM-coach as well as anyone who’s ever played. They go back 25 years, to when Messier was a junior in Edmonton and Sather was coaching in the WHA.
“Glen is a leader and always has been,” said Messier, who won his first four Cups with Sather behind the bench. “He’s a players’ coach who gets the best out of what he has. He knows how to motivate, he understands strategy as well as anyone, he knows how to maximize the potential of his players.
“Because of what he’s done, he automatically has respect from the past, but like anyone else – any player who joins a new team – he’s going to have to earn the respect of the players that are here now.”
Sather, who was asked by Pavel Bure last summer to go behind the bench before Trottier was hired, wasn’t his own first choice to step in yesterday. But when assistant Jim Schoenfeld declined to take the job, the GM believed he had no better alternative.
“I’m as surprised as anybody,” No. 11 said. “But I know he feels responsible for the situation and believes that he can do something about it.”